‘What poet hasn’t dreamed / Of becoming lightning?’: Poems and voices from across geographies

Almost Island will host the 16th Almost Island Dialogues, a three-day gathering of international poets and writers from April 10 to April 12, 2026 at the G5A Warehouse in Mumbai. The 2026 Dialogues will feature international poets and writers: Don Mee Choi (South Korea/US); Najwan Darwish (Palestine); Ales Steger (Slovenia); Vyomesh Shukla (Varanasi); Sampurna Chattarji (Mumbai); Mantra Mukim (Raipur/Oxford); and Sharmistha Mohanty (Mumbai).

Here are some poems by the invited poets:

Lightning Writes Poetry

by Najwan Darwish, translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Lightning never sits down at a table
to write poetry
yet it is poetry’s only embodiment.
It lights up the whole universe
then disappears
What poet hasn’t dreamed
Of becoming lightning?

Time Is

by Aleš Šteger, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry

Time is a migratory bird.
Man has
The genome of a stone.

From DMZ Colony
Orphan Kim Seong-rye
(Age 15)

by Don Mee Choi

I saw countless charred bodies. I saw rows and rows of corpses. A year later on a rainy summer day I heard cries from the pit. Oblong oblong. I saw ghosts floating about in the forest. They circled and circled me.

A Thousand Parents

by Sampurna Chattarji

A boy with hair
might be construed
the last of the series.
The difference between
the scrupulously clean
hands and the dull pain
of distance is quite
clear and complete.
The light never came back
on the lower slopes
among the rain clouds.
All this is as it should be.
One’s attachment took
the place of words.
I have a thousand parents
Angular and cryptic.

Broken

by Sharmistha Mohanty

A reeling earth, billowing seas
monsoon in every room

a fatal century
become tremor in our hands

each of us undone
by what we cannot make whole

by things that exceed
their universe

Untitled

By Mantra Mukim

From ‘Just Tears’

by Vyomesh Shukla, translated from the Hindi by Mantra Mukim

Lack of lubrication. Things were starting to grate against other things. Like my mother’s knee cap. Between every first and second thing, there was a lack of a third. An abrasive friction could be felt in the blink of an eye. People were fixated. Everyone walked around with a deep, compulsive gaze. A dry gaze bereft of blinking. Some thought the condition was treatable. When the element resting between the eyelid and the eye finally disappeared, it became impossible to cry, to shed a tear. The lack of tears got everyone worked up. Dams, crocodiles, and agents found themselves equally in this mess. A doctor sat next to the strangeness of the tree and started handing out prescriptions for lubrication. The cure was called: Just Tears.

lmost Island is a literary platform founded by poet and writer Sharmistha Mohanty. It began as an online journal in 2007 before expanding into an international writers’ dialogue held annually in New Delhi. This year, the Dialogues will be held for the first time in Mumbai. Conceived as a space for literary exchange that threatens, confronts or bypasses the marketplace by its depth and seriousness and form, Almost Island brings together voices from across geographies. The writers meet to engage in readings and deep conversations that centre around issues of craft, form, and content as well as the context of writing in different cultures and political situations. Past invitees include 2025 Nobel Prize winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla, acclaimed Chinese poet Bei Dao, Chilean poet Raul Zurita, Irwin Allan Sealy, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and many others.